


It's About to Get Weird

by dearestghost



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Anal Sex, Bill's back, Dipper's bi, Enemies With Benefits, M/M, Post-Canon, and he's hot, but kind of as a human, naturally, oh no, really only chapter one is explicit, seven years post-canon to be precise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29596644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearestghost/pseuds/dearestghost
Summary: It's been seven years since Bill died, but now, when Dipper returns with Mabel to Gravity Falls for their annual summer trip, Bill reappears—and he's a lot more human than before. Dipper gets tangled up in an enemies-with-benefits thing, and his family finds out, but the worst is yet to come. Bill isn't the only demon who's developed a liking for Gravity Falls, and even with Bill more or less on their side this time, the Pines family will have to face another apocalypse that they may not be able to stop.
Relationships: Bill Cipher/Dipper Pines
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dipper's POV

A coppery sunlight stained the ground and tree trunks, lending an even more magical quality to a forest that already had more than its fair share of supernatural allure. My visit would have to be quick if I wanted to make it back to the Mystery Shack before nightfall. 

Thankfully my hangover had settled down to mere pulsating headache. I didn’t drink much, but last night had been an exception. None of the bartenders in the slightly sketchy club on the outskirts of Gravity Falls had bothered to ask for ID, so my being two years too young to drink was no obstacle. It was the first time I’d ever actually gotten blackout drunk, and it wasn’t an experience I was likely to repeat. 

Last night had been a significant deviation from my normal summer routine. In the seven years since I’d turned down Ford’s offer of an apprenticeship, I had kept up with the paranormal curiosity that had dogged me since that fateful summer. Every summer, I came back to Gravity Falls with Mabel and continued to investigate the town’s dark side. 

After Bill’s defeat, the town felt so much tamer, but danger was never far away if you knew where to look for it. Smaller paranormal happenings were a daily occurrence, and my reputation from the first summer as a monster hunter evolved as I repeatedly proved my skills throughout the next several years. Gradually I gained almost as much fame as Grunkle Stan, though for a much different reason. 

It was my third day of summer vacation after my sophomore year at Stanford University. I’d caught buses back here and met Mabel, from her California college, and the Grunkles, from whatever corner of the world they were last at. We’d spent the first couple days back catching up with each other. Soos and Melody had gotten married three years ago, and she was very pregnant at the moment. Mabel had risen to become the president of her college’s Compassion Politics Club. As far as I could tell, the club had very few tenets besides being pro-everything. Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford had just been studying every crevice of Greenland, and they were accredited with the discovery of a new, slightly magical species of puffin. 

Then, last night, I’d given into an impulse and gone out. It was so unlike my usual cautious self, especially considering the incident it almost led to, I could barely believe I’d done it. Now, though, I felt more like myself. Alone in these woods, I was in my element. 

Walking through the forest, I watched leaves stirring in windless air, red and gold curls kicked up into whirlwinds by an unseen force. The sound of running water jumped from one side of the woods to the other, always seeming to come from somewhere else entirely as soon as you turned toward to it. 

The woods of Gravity Falls never failed to awe me, predatorial and frustratingly intricate as they were. I’d become confident in my knowledge of the forest, mapping it out and sketching its inhabitants and listing its abnormalities, but the weirdness it contained was still so charming. As soon as I entered it, I always felt as if I was returning to a second home in some endearing alternative realm. 

Humidity coated me like a moist, gross blanket, despite the canopy cover overhead. Just ahead of me, the statue remained immobile, an apparently willing foundation for an array of moss and even a now-abandoned birds’ nest. The stone had not moved in seven years, if my annual calculations were correct. Taking out my journal (the fifth one I’d written myself), I flipped it open and confirmed the measurements I’d predicted based on years past. No change. 

As I looked down to put my book away, I thought I caught sight of the statue blink (wink?). I knew by now that the peripheral vision was the most untrustworthy of the human senses, but when I stared dead on at Bill, the twitch of the eyelid was unmistakable. 

A chill settled in my bones, though the sun still glimmered stubbornly on the edge of the horizon. Why now? What was he doing active, when this had never happened before? I’d always been so careful not to touch his tauntingly outstretched hand. I’d warned everyone else at the Mystery Shack to do the same. But there it was—movement. As I stared, his long pupil swiveled to the right, focusing on me. 

The twelve-year-old in me fought a silent war with himself, debating whether to run or stay. The nineteen-year-old me didn’t bother. I was investigating this no matter what I was afraid of. 

I sat down in the grass, careful not to take my gaze from Bill for a second. Vaguely I wondered what I’d do when night fell and I could no longer see the statue clearly, but I didn’t have to wonder long. 

“You grew up, Pine Tree.” 

I jumped. The voice was unmistakable, but it took a minute for my eyes to catch up to what I heard. I stood and whirled around to face the demon, expecting a floating fluorescent triangle. Instead, I saw a man who appeared not much older than me. Tall, lanky limbs, blond hair, an angular face with a sneering mouth scratched into it. One eye a clouded, sightless blue, the other dimly glowing. “Bill?”

“In the flesh.” Within his functioning eye, Bill’s pupil stretched, a dark oval in incandescent yellow. “It’s touching you came all the way out here to visit me, Pine Tree. You must’ve missed me.” 

I stumbled up, stepping backward so fast I almost collided with the statue. “How the hell are you here? And like that?” 

Bill leaned against a thick sycamore, his hands sunk in his pockets. “Relax. If I was here for revenge, I would’ve used the element of surprise while I had it. I’m not really in the mood for Twenty Questions, though. Rest assured that the fact I’m alive again shows that I’m still in someone’s good favor, at least.” 

I pulled Fiddleford’s memory gun (the new edition I’d talked him into making) out of my bag and pointed it at Bill’s head. “Fuck off.” 

Bill smiled, still casually reclining against the monstrous tree. “There’s no need to threaten me. In fact, I think you’d prefer me with my mind intact. At least, that’s how you seemed to feel last night.” 

In shock, my mind flickered through the alcohol-distorted memories of the previous night: a club on the outskirts of town, and the attractive stranger I’d met there. I’d almost gone home with—Bill? Gritting my teeth against the realization, I pulled the trigger. 

Bill disappeared before the beam could hit him, appearing a few feet away to the left. I shot again, watching him vanish, and then his voice sounded from just behind me. “Pine Tree, stop being stupid. It’s getting annoying. And anyway, I didn’t come here to kill you.” 

I spun to face him, still holding out the memory gun as if it hadn’t just proved its uselessness. “Why, then? What do you want?” 

“I have a proposition for you. Not a deal, exactly, though I’m sure it’ll be mutually beneficial.” His smirk was unnerving. Humanoid or not, he was still undoubtedly dangerous. 

“No. I’m never making another deal with you. After how it ended last time, I’m surprised you’d even offer.” 

Bill sighed. “Come on, Pine Tree, it’s not as if you have to actually like me. It’s only a truce. Be reasonable. And let’s just say that at this point it’s far more useful for both of us to be on each other’s side rather than in opposition. And, honestly, I’d rather not have to be concerned about potentially being accosted at any moment. I live here, too, now.” 

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re less powerful now, aren’t you? You’d never avoid a fight unless you thought you might not win.”

He clicked his tongue. “Good guess, although I could still win. I’d just rather not be inconvenienced with petty rivalry. Anyway, what do you say to letting bygones be bygones and getting on the same side? I’m not asking for any favors. Just live and let live.” 

I wasn’t about to be fooled by this charade of peacefulness. He was up to something. “I don’t think so, Bill. We killed you once. We can do it again.” 

“And I could just come back again. Or we could just get past that unnecessary back-and-forth nonsense and cut to the chase—an alliance.” 

I had no idea if he was bluffing; had his resurrection been some kind of fluke, or was he really somehow immortal? Even though now he was apparently less powerful, he’d already come back inexplicably once. What if he really wasn’t lying, and he’d come back next time in some new, worse form, less willing to bargain? 

As I studied his new body—aggravatingly the same one I’d been grinding against in the dimly-lit club yesterday—a feeling rolled over me that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Being attracted to him when I was drunk was one thing, but now, even with full disclosure of his identity, I still thought he was sexy.

He must have noticed the heat in my face because suddenly he grinned. “How’s about we compromise? You get to get some of that horniness out of your system, and I get to find out how this new body… performs. No tricks, nothing else. Not even a promise of an alliance. Just sex. Think of it as a favor—I’m giving you experience, at no cost. Scout’s honor.” He crossed his heart, if he even had one. 

“I…” A part of me, a big part, wanted instinctively to say no. This was Bill I was dealing with, not some random harmless guy. But wasn’t he pretty much harmless now? He hadn’t come to kill me; he’d even denied planning to. And he’d implied that his powers were diminished—though I how no clue how much. But how bad could this be? 

Not to mention, I did want him. My hard-on was now making itself felt by beginning to ache dully. But I had to remember what Bill had done: tricking us, commandeering and terrorizing the town, trying to kill all of us. I shouldn’t trust him, even when my body was giving me completely different signals. 

“Maybe.” 

Bill looked off at the sun, now barely tinging the sky as it drifted beneath the horizon. “I can accept that. I’m in no hurry. But I’ll have to get a definite answer sooner or later.” He grinned, his good eye glowing like an animal’s in the falling darkness. “See you soon, Pine Tree.” He snapped his fingers, and he was gone. 

Alone in the night, I shivered, but it wasn’t from cold, or fear. A new feeling had struck my body, catching me off guard: excitement. 

The next morning, after Mabel and I had eaten breakfast with the Grunkles, I went outside to the front porch. The dilapidated porch swing was somehow still functional, although the boards in the ceiling it hung from moaned ominously as I sat down. 

It was a hot, clear day, the humidity already making me sweat. The porch fan rattled loudly above me, cutting into my thoughts. I was trying not to think about Bill, and failing horribly. My mind kept bringing me the image of his smirk, exposing even, white teeth. And the angular cut of his eyes above a definitively aquiline nose. And I’d never seen an ass shaped that well. Goddammit, why did he have to be exactly my type? I kicked a crushed Pit Cola can viciously off the porch, sending it sailing towards the woods. The bug-eyed goat that hung around the Shack chased eagerly after it. 

The door creaked open behind me, and I hurriedly flipped open the journal in my lap to the page I’d started yesterday. 

Mabel skipped out and sat down next to me, sending the rickety swing squeaking dangerously as she kicked us into motion with her feet. She pumped like it was a regular swing, her pink Vans propelling us back and forth with her usual vigor. “What’s up, Dippin’ Dots?” 

“I’ve been trying to work out why there’s been some spikes of magic out in the woods this year. A little irregularity is normal, but this seems really odd. They’re all the same place, same intensity, different times.” At the end of every summer, I left out my sturdy outdoor equipment in various spots in the woods so I could record energy measurements while I was away at school. I’d just checked the readings out yesterday. “Something’s different this year, I just don’t know what yet.” 

Mabel sighed, looking over my shoulder at the mathematical scribbles in my journal. “That’s basically homework. You’re always so serious, every summer. And I bet it’s no different during the school year. Did you go to any parties this year?” 

“No, but at first it was because of Samantha, and then…” I didn’t have a good reason, but I still hadn’t gone to one since my exceedingly jealous girlfriend of seven months had broken up with me because, I quote, she ‘didn’t want to cheat but had found someone else who seemed like they’d be a better fuck.’ It had turned me off from romance for a bit. “But I did go to a club the other night.” 

I must’ve looked a little too suspicious because she narrowed her eyes. “Did you meet a girl there? Or a guy?” 

I’d discovered my parallel interest in the same sex a couple years ago, although I had yet to act on it much. At her question, heat flooded my face. “Uh, kind of, I mean, he’s—not really.” 

Mabel grinned, undeterred. “Dipper, c’mon, go get that dick. I know you’re pretty much over Samantha by now, and you could really use someone new. You can achieve the summer romance I never could!” 

I laughed awkwardly. “That’s not really my thing, though. I like to think I’m more pragmatic than spontaneous.” 

“You are. That’s the problem. Come on, give me details. Is he hot?” 

“Well, yeah, very.” 

“Is he available?” 

“Um, that was my impression.” 

“Is he DTF?” 

“Obviously.” 

“Well, then what’s stopping you?” 

I thought back to the murky memories of the prior night—the feeling of our sweat intermingling, the way he was clearly just as hard as I was and hiding it just as poorly. Then, amongst a tide of blurry moments, I recalled a minute of clarity. He had guided my heavily-intoxicated self outside to a waiting taxi, and I had embarrassingly begged him—someone who was virtually a stranger—to come home with me. He’d said no, on account of me being drunk. Wait, Bill had actively chosen not to take advantage of me? What the fuck? I’d even asked him to, and he hadn’t said yes, even given a chance I knew he must’ve wanted. 

That was a change. Maybe there was more to his new form than I’d thought—maybe he’d actually become a little more caring, a little more truly human. And Mabel was right, I really did have a tendency to play it safe rather than sorry in romantic situations, and I’d missed out on a lot of fun in the past because of it. 

Hell, it was summer. Why not? After all, what was wrong with a little harmless fucking? It wasn’t like I had to promise him something in return. If he asked for anything extra, I’d just refuse. 

I felt a weight lift off my mind; my decision was made. I grinned at Mabel. “Nothing’s stopping me. Absolutely nothing.” 

With no moon to break it, darkness traced every inch of the attic room. Mabel was off at a sleepover with Candy and Grenda, leaving our bedroom to me. In her absence, the silence sank over me, a physical weight. I sat down on my creaking bed, swallowed up by the night along with the rest of the room. 

I’d just put away my journals and notes for the night and was thinking about trying to sleep. For some reason I just wasn’t tired; I listened to the bugs making their strange harmony of noises outside the stained-glass window. I glanced at the triangle-shaped pattern formed by the shards of colored glass, and I realized what it was I waiting for. 

As if he’d known my thoughts, Bill was there, making no point of creeping. He appeared instantaneously, standing in the middle of the room, dressed casually as he had been at the club. He glanced leisurely around the room, his yellow eye gleaming. “I was bored, so I’d thought I’d stop by. Have you made your decision?”

I rose from the bed, stepping carefully over the junk strewn all over the attic floor. “Maybe. But I could always be further convinced.” 

Bill grinned. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as coy. But I’ll comply.” He circled around me, bringing his body close to mine. He stood behind my shoulder. “Now that I have my own body to make use of,” he breathed gently into my ear. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it out?” 

My heart was in my throat, beating loudly through my blood, and every word seemed to stick on its way out of my mouth. “Why would I do that?” 

“Oh, are you saying I’m not attractive enough? Maybe you’d prefer another form?” The hardness I felt disappeared; taking my hand, Bill cupped my fingers around his groin. Through his pants I felt the outline of very different equipment, and when he spoke in the thick night his voice was higher. “Like this?” 

I wrenched my hand away, turning. “No.” His transformation was jarring, reminding me of who—and what—I was touching in the darkness. 

Arms wrapped around my chest from behind. I could feel that he’d returned to normal—and was just as turned on as before. “I thought I knew you, Pine Tree. But I was a bit surprised to see you at the club the other night. Girls aren’t your thing anymore?” 

“They are, usually, just—” Not you. 

His arms tightened, pressing my head to a firm, lithe chest. His voice in my ear inspired none of the tingling fear I remembered. “I understand.” 

I forced myself to speak firmly. “And I won’t shake your hand. That never ends well.” 

I felt him shrug behind my head. “I didn’t expect you to. Like I said, it’s not really a deal. Just a way to pass the time, really.” His fingertips brushed over my face, my neck, moving to the hem of my shirt and lifting it. Cold air ran over my skin; I felt wholly alive, almost supernaturally attuned to every movement he made and every place he touched me. 

My shirt was off, and I was lying on my back on my bed. His nails were running over me, turning my skin to deliciously sensitive static. Heat flowed readily towards my core. Bill leaned over me, tracing the tip of my ear with his tongue. And then he turned and kissed me. 

It was electric. And over far too soon, but he was already moving on to other areas. My belt buckle opened willingly to his fingers, and a moment later, his hands were at my waist, pulling my legs free of my jeans and boxers. Naked, I shivered in the cold attic air, but he was quick to wrap his hand around my dick and begin rubbing, cementing my hardness. 

I don’t remember him taking his clothes off, but somehow his naked skin pressed down on me. Heat seeped steadily south of my core as his hard dick, warm and tender, brushed between my thighs. He looked just as good naked as I’d hoped. 

He prepped me quickly, slipping a finger inside of me with some of the lube I'd pulled out of my nightstand and spinning it until he could just fit in another, and then another. I didn't mind the speed we were moving at—the less time I had to think about what I was doing, the better. 

Suddenly he pulled his fingers out and lifted himself onto his elbows, leaning forward so we met eye to eye—head to head. “Ready?” 

“Yes,” the answer came as barely more than a breath. 

He flipped me over onto my stomach, pulling my waist to him with one hand, the other wrapping around my dick again. I barely had time to register the warmth of him, pressed against me, before he was inside me. 

He moved his hand in time with his thrusts. My fingers gripped the blankets so hard my knuckles went white, and I gasped when I came. It hit me so hard that black curled around the edges of my vision as I seemed to explode. 

Once I was finished, he crushed me to the bed, his weight holding me in place. Vaguely I realized I was laying in my own cum, but I didn’t have the energy to mind. The pressure of him, rougher now, plunging in and out of me, was gloriously paralyzing. I felt suspended in some strange wet dream, but if so, I never wanted to wake up. I was reduced to the heat of our joined bodies and the sense of touch alone. 

I started to moan loudly, but in a second Bill’s hand was over my mouth. “Shh, Pine Tree. Don’t want your family to hear.” Gone was the callous coolness that usually tainted his voice, and instead his tone was heavy with desire. 

I could feel his legs shaking, and then suddenly a new warmth filled me as his whole body relaxed. He pulled out, and we flopped side by side on the disarrayed bed, panting hard. Gradually we recovered. 

I wasn’t sure if I’d expected any kind of pillow talk, considering this was Bill, but I was still surprised when he rose abruptly, grabbing his clothes off the floor and stepping into them. As I watched, the orgasm-fueled euphoria draining away, he leaned over me again. I thought he was going to kiss me again, but instead he dodged my mouth, giving me a peck on the check that felt distinctly condescending. “You look pretty cute covered in your own cum. Until next time, pet.” 

And without another word, he vanished, leaving me alone again in the quiet dark to wonder what exactly I’d just done.


	2. Chapter 2

A full week after the first time we had sex, Bill and I were lying side by side on my bed again, panting in the aftermath of a good fuck. Mabel was gone again tonight; all week I’d found myself looking forward to the hours she’d be away from the Shack.

I’d really thought it would be over after the first time, but on the next night, he’d arrived again, this time pulling me out into the dark of the yard. Earlier, I had tried to convince myself that I’d turn down any future offers for a repeat, but standing there in the shadowy enclosure of the trees, the grass soft under my bare feet and Bill’s hand gripping my chin—his eyes on mine, burning with the same desire I felt—I couldn’t resist.

Besides, after the first, the damage was done. He was just so good, and all I was really doing was adding to my (admittedly limited) sexual experience. What was the harm in indulging myself a few more times?

Now, with several nights behind us, I felt no closer to being ready to stop. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it worried me, this compulsion to be with him so much. But for now, I was trying to forget about that.

Beside me, Bill sighed in satisfaction and stretched his long limbs, his joints cracking. “You’re getting good at this, Pine Tree. I’m surprised.”

“Hey, it’s not like I was a virgin when we started,” I snapped. His condescension been getting on my nerves a lot in the past few days. Really, the only time I actually enjoyed his presence was while we were fucking. And that was always over far too quickly.

I rolled onto my side, facing him. He lay on his back on my bed, moonlight delicately tracing the contours of his profile. “Bill, why can’t we ever have a conversation like normal people?”

He turned his face towards me, his eye glowing like a moon all its own. “What do you mean?”

“I still don’t know anything about you, really. If you want me to trust you, you have to give me more than the fact that you fuck well and that you tried to kill me and my family a few times.”

“Still haven’t gotten over that? You humans can hold grudges like no other species.” His callousness was maddening.

Clearly, I was going to have to be more persuasive if I wanted to connect at all emotionally. “I’m serious. I won’t see you again, in any sense, if you don’t honestly tell me about something, anything, that actually matters to you.”

He chuckled, his voice echoing off the room’s dark walls. “I could always force you. Making sure this fun we have is mutual was just a courtesy.”

My blood ran cold, and I fought the urge to run out the door and downstairs, away from him. “You’re bluffing.” His eyes were fixed on me, the yellow one colder even than the unseeing one. I stumbled on, grasping for words. “If you really only cared about getting sex, you wouldn’t have bothered asking me in the first place. And you definitely would’ve taken the advantage I gave you that first night I met you, at the bar.”

Silence reigned for a long moment, and when he spoke, his words broke through it heavily, full of mocking laughter. “Are you seriously suggesting that I care about you?”

Face reddening, heart pounding, I backtracked. “No, no, I’m not. Just that maybe you’re a little more compassionate than you like to portray. A little more—human.”

“Well, definitely, in this form. Unfortunately, one of the human traits I did happen to inherit is greater feeling, emotionally speaking. Not that it makes much of a difference—it’s just an inconvenience. I knew humans were frequently driven by their emotions, but feelings this intense are ridiculous. How did you survive without evolving this out of your systems?”

“And I guess in your last form you felt none of it?”

“Selfishness was seen as an important instinct for survival in my species. When it came down to it, that was one thing we could all agree on. We were like—like snakes, in this world. Coldblooded and coldhearted. Emotion, if we felt it, was always on the back burner. That’s why I thought they’d understand what I did. But when the end of the world came, let me tell you, they did not go as passively as I expected.”

I found myself experiencing a kind of mental whiplash. “Wait, what? There were more dream demons?”

“Of course.” He snorted. “It’s not like we came from—” He stopped and smirked at me. “I know what you’re doing, Pine Tree. You think you can distract me into telling you whatever it is you want to know.”

“Just what exactly you meant by the end of your old world, and about your species.”

He sighed. “I guess I can tell you this one, old story, as long as you blow me afterward and we agree to never talk about this again.”

“Fine.” It didn’t slip past me that he’d completely taken the conversation’s reins out of my hands and into his. Still, I was getting what I wanted. “So what happened to the other dream demons? How many are left besides you?”

“Zero. I killed them all.”

For a moment I was taken aback. “What? Why?”

“I was trying to free our world. I wanted to explode us into the third dimension. You have no idea how lucky you are to have been born in this expanded realm. Eons ago, long before your Earth even existed, I lived among the others in world of only two dimensions: Dimension 768~1.” Bill’s purposefully cool expression couldn’t stop his good eye from losing focus on me, mentally drifting back through the ages with an obvious sense of nostalgia. “Despite what you might be thinking, we weren’t by nature an evil race, in your terms. Seemingly indestructible show-offs, sure, but not villains. Crime was nearly nonexistent, seeing as we had relative collective omniscience. The younger generation was always getting into trouble, of course, but nothing horrible.”

“Did that include you?”

“Yes, I was only four or five millennia old when I, uh, left. I was a little more ambitious than my friends—I wanted a wider life. Being crammed into two dimensions sucks, I promise, no matter what other powers you have.”

“So, how’d you end up killing everyone?”

“I set our whole world on fire, basically. In order to free us, I had to become more powerful, impossibly powerful. I enjoyed it at first—the extent of the damage I could cause, all on my own. But it spread so fast. All the lives gone in the flames, just like that.” He snapped his fingers, the noise abrupt in the darkness.

“How could you do it? You had to know that people were going to die, and you must’ve killed your family and friends, too.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure. I thought I could do it—destroy the world and save those in it, or at least the ones that mattered. I thought it would be better for us to be free—even if our numbers were smaller—than for us to live on trapped in a measly two dimensions.”

“But it didn’t work that way.”

“Not at all. I though the survivors would celebrate me, once I had opened the way to escaping. Instead I killed everyone I’d ever cared about and drove my own species extinct except myself. It was a sin in anyone’s book, especially to Time Baby and his annoying underlings, so I was on the run from then on. It was an exciting life, at least once I’d settled into it.”

“Is that how you ended up in the Nightmare Realm, where Ford met you?”

“Eventually. First, I wandered for a while. My species was a private, superior one, so we really didn’t interact with any other species in a manner that could be comfortably called ‘friendly.’ Our culture and our world were our own, and we didn’t need anyone else. So once that had disappeared in the span of a day, I was alone. At first, that was what I wanted—to sit with my what I’d done, to count up the death toll since no one else would. And despite the lack of sentimentality in my species, I did grieve them. So, I did that, and once I was over that, I found ways to amuse myself, popping between realms and performing a few magic tricks to terrorize less powerful beings.

“Eventually, though, I wanted to rebuild myself. If I couldn’t bring back my world and those in it, I could try to create a new family out of new friends. But it was too late. When you destroy a realm, you burn any bridges that you might’ve had. Especially when Time Baby caught up to me and banished me to the Nightmare Realm, I was really isolated, and I couldn’t find a way out.

“After a while, I got into a bit of a dicey situation and I almost died. That’s when I met the Axolotl. I woke up in a land of clouds. They were so thick around the creature that I couldn’t even get an idea of how big it was—but it was big, bigger than some worlds I’ve seen. It told me that I could be forgiven for my destruction, but first I had to get killed by someone that I knew well, though I couldn’t tell them about this deal or about what I had done. I had to face the same merciless death that I had inflicted. While I died, if I invoked the Axolotl’s name, I could reform in a different body, at a different time. To the Council and anyone else concerned I would have vanished. I would be able to start over again.”

“So, when Grunkle Stan killed you—you wanted that to happen?”

“More or less. Honestly, I was pretty reluctant to die, but it all worked out. I’m getting to that part.”

I remembered how Stan had described Bill’s last words—the desperate attempt at a deal, the strange mumbling that I now identified as an invocation. Still, had Bill’s fear been real? Or had he only been manipulating us, as always?

He continued on, interrupting my train of thought. “So, after the Axolotl saved my life, I tried to forget about him immediately. I wasn’t too keen on dying, so I figured there had to be another way to get what I wanted. I decided I was done with moping, and I made some new friends, handpicked from the range of outcasts the Nightmare Realm hosted. Then I got caught up in creating chaos in whatever way I could, and, honestly, working out a way to enter this world was the most fun I’d had in a while. I thought I could use a new, young world to my advantage and reshape it as I chose. I’d party for a while, then settle down and finally make a new home. Obviously, that didn’t go as planned.”

“Thankfully. You would have killed all of us.”

He shrugged. “The circle of life, you could say. It seemed a small price to pay for a fresh start.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Anyway, I died like the Axolotl predicted, and the next thing I knew, it was seven years in the future, and I looked like this.” He gestured to his admittedly magnificent body.

I didn’t know what to say. It was news to me that Bill had, in fact, been driven by anything other than passing whims. I couldn’t believe he was lying about all of it, either; to paint himself in this kind of light—as an emotionally reactive person—only made him seem more like any regular human being. This level of honesty from him was a shock. I pressed a little further. “So, is you name really Bill Cipher?”

“It might as well be. There’s no one alive who can pronounce my real name. Most of us had substitute names for those from other realms to use. This was the one I picked. So, yeah, in a way it’s my name.”

My mind was still racing to comprehend the whole of what he’d told me—the emotional ups and downs, the multitude of demons like of him that had once existed, and the very strange realization that even Bill had had parents.

And not to mention the power it would take to destroy a world—or “free” it, whatever. I’d thought of Bill as godlike before, but this knowledge took that metaphor to a whole other level. I looked anew at him beside me, and the difference between this thin, jaded man and the image of an omnipotent god was jarring. Not to say he still wasn’t evil, but… he had to be lying about how much, or rather how little, power he had left in him.

This was the culmination of some theorizing I’d been working on in the last week. Very rarely had I witnessed him perform magic since his reappearance, and, when he did, it was often for brief, fairly harmless tricks. Usually, these bits of magic had the highest frequency in the morning and tapered off towards nighttime. This led me to believe that he had some way of charging up that magic on a daily basis—and that he needed to do so, instead of relying on the seemingly bottomless well of magic he’d had years ago. Clearly, Bill was, at best, a tenth of the threat he had posed before. It was reassuring, and, weirdly, kind of sad.

Currently he was sobering up from his uncharacteristic spill of backstory. Never had I heard him speak so many words at once, and now, as he smirked at me, I know the gap he’d opened into his psyche was closed. “So, Pine Tree, now that you’ve tapped my mind, I think it’s only fair I get your end of the bargain fulfilled.”

As I settled my head between his legs in compliance, my thoughts turned briefly back to a mental picture of Bill, some millennia ago, floating freely in a darkness, alone in the wake of destruction and loss. I felt, faintly, a tug of sympathy pulling at my heart before I brushed it away to take him into my mouth.

I awoke to the sound of steps creaking outside the attic door. Over my head, light streamed in through the window, and with a jolt I realized Bill had never left.

Panic surged through me, and I shook Bill awake. Too late—Ford entered without so much as knocking.

“Dipper, I thought—”

For a second that felt like an eternity, we sat in silence. Ford stared at Bill, who was still casually sprawled under the covers with me, naked. Then the spell broke, and Ford whipped out his gun. It was no memory gun—this was a Glock, pointed directly at Bill’s forehead. “Get the hell out of my damn house, you monster.”

Bill smiled. “Good morning to you, too, Fordsy.”

In response, Ford racked the gun, a bullet sliding audibly into the chamber. “I’m itching to find out if this thing works on that new form of yours, so you might want to hurry.”

Despite the warning, Bill took his time getting up, stretching and glancing back over at Ford as he pulled on his jeans. “I’m impressed at your conviction, Sixer. How’d you know it was me? What if you’d just been aiming that gun at some hapless mortal boy?”

“I knew you for years. Not to mention, that yellow eye’s a giveaway.” Ford shifted his glare to me. “For God’s sake, Dipper, put some clothes on, too. He didn’t… hurt you, did he?”

“No,” I said quickly, just as Bill snickered, “Only a little.”

“Not helping!” I snapped, throwing on my own pants and shirt.

Ford still held out the gun with his finger on the trigger, tracking Bill’s movements. “Both of you be quiet. Bill, you have three seconds to leave before I kill you.”

“Geez, Fordsy—” But he stepped minutely away from the bed, away from me, followed by the barrel of the gun.

“Three… two…”

Bill grabbed his shirt and I could see his body tense as he called on his magic to teleport. To my surprise, something like worry struck my heart as I realized he might not be able to. I had no idea if he’d had a chance to recharge his magic. Sweat gleamed on his forehead. Ford wasn’t really going to just shoot him for not leaving fast enough, was he?

“One!”

The gun went off. Less than a second after Bill disappeared, the bullet shot through the air he’d vacated, driving itself into the wall and out through the other side.

I stared at the hole and then at Ford in shock. “You almost killed him.”

“Yes, and I would’ve if he’d been any slower.” He met my eyes, his gaze full of cold disappointment. “Just as you should’ve done. I can’t believe I found him with you. After everything he put us through—put you through—Anyway. I’m calling a family meeting over breakfast. Come downstairs once you’re finished getting dressed.”

He slammed the door on his way out, leaving the room filled uncomfortably with silence. I stuffed my feet into socks and shoes and walked downstairs, feeling like a disobedient child.

Back from last night’s weekly sleepover, Mabel sat at the table, a confused look on her face. She grinned when she saw me. “Dipper! How was your night?”

“Uh, fine.” I pulled out a chair, its metal legs squeaking against the tile, and scooted it farther away from Ford’s black expression.

Stan gave me half a smile over his shoulder as he stood at the stove, cooking bacon. “Morning, Dip.”

“Morning.” Clearly Ford hadn’t told them yet. I braced myself, but he waited until Stan had finished with the bacon, and Mabel had made the eggs and served them. Finally when we all had our plates—I picked at mine, which Mabel had arranged with two fried egg eyes and a bacon smile—Ford began.

“Bill is back, like he said he’d be.”

Mabel spat out her half-chewed eggs. “You’re kidding! We killed him!”

Ford shook his head. “Apparently he was… resurrected. He has a new, humanoid form.”

Stan kept his mouth in a thin, neutral line, but I saw the fear in his eyes. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to save us this time, if we needed it. “How do you know?”

“I caught Dipper… fraternizing with Bill in his room this morning.”

Stan barked a thin laugh. “Ford, your jokes are generally pretty bad, but that was the worst one yet.”

“I’m not kidding, Stanley.”

“Oh.” Stan’s expression turned as grim as Ford’s as they both looked at me. I couldn’t help but notice how identical their faces looked just then, both unshaven and pissed.

I had no idea what to say to them. “I, um…”

Suddenly, Ford gripped my shoulders, his eyes practically burning holes into mine. “Were you the one who raised him back from the dead? Did you betray us like that?”

“No, no, I swear I didn’t! I would never have done that! I was angry when I found out he was back again, too, honestly, but then he… I don’t think we have to worry about him being evil anymore.”

He released me and sat back, but the anger stayed in his gaze. “Dipper, have you lost your mind? Bill is evil, no matter how he’s seduced you. I thought you were smarter than this.”

His last sentence hit me like a brick wall, but I didn’t know how to explain myself. It did look really bad, me in bed with him. And what evidence did I have that he truly changed? None, except my intuition and the fact that for some reason, I really didn’t want to give him up. I struggled to my own defense. “It’s not that big of a deal. I didn’t side with him or anything. I didn’t even make a deal.” I was very familiar with pleading with others to believe my side of things, especially in this town, but this was different from any other supernatural occurrence I’d had to explain before. I fumbled on. “I don’t exactly trust him, either, but he told me things about himself, things he couldn’t have made up. And he’s way less powerful now.”

Stan stared at me as he drummed his fingers on the counter, his voice brimming with barely contained rage. “What happened to your little crush on Wendy? That was a lot less weird.”

“I haven’t liked her in years, Grunkle Stan. And calling me weird is just the pot calling the kettle black, I think.”

He huffed. “Whatever, kid. I know I generally don’t care what you do as long as no one dies, but this is different. Bill’s a murderer. I literally sacrificed my mind just to get rid of that evil piece of… that monster. And now you’re friends with him, or worse, and you’re actually spending time with him in my house?”

Subconsciously, I’d pressed myself deeper into my chair. I’d never heard Stan this angry, never seen his aggression directed at me before. “It’s only been a week,” I answered lamely.

Mabel gasped. “Oh! Then he’s the one I saw you with last night!”

Ford turned with renewed scorn to face her. “You didn’t tell us?”

I winced at the memory: coming back from the woods, Bill had walked with me to the edge of the trees before he’d disappeared back into them. As soon as he was gone, I’d heard Mabel oohing at me from the attic window. She’d peppered me with questions as soon as I was inside, but I’d managed to keep it a secret—until today, of course.

Now, Mabel shrugged at Ford. “I couldn’t see him very well, but I should’ve known it was Bill. No one else in this decade would’ve dyed their hair like that. Blond with a black undercut? Really?”

“I’m sorry you’re bothered by my hair, Shooting Star, but that feels like a pretty low blow.”

All of our heads swiveled toward the front door as Bill padded in past the entryway to stand in at the kitchen threshold. “I thought I’d come back and explain, since Pine Tree definitely is doing an awful job.”

“Hey, I—”

“Don’t get offended, kid. You’re still a great fuck buddy.” He winked at me and grinned.

Ford sighed. “And back to this. Bill, I’ll still shoot you.” He reached for his gun.

“Fine by me.” Bill lifted his hands to demonstrate their emptiness. “I don’t intend to attack any of you, so that in fact makes me the good guy here. I’m okay with having the moral high ground for a change.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Pine Tree when I met him: I just want some peace. Honestly, no tricks.” He held up his hands, empty palms up. “You won, I lost, blah blah blah, all that is behind us. I’m not dumb enough to make the same mistake twice.”

“Hardly. Somehow, that’s not enough to make me trust you.” Ford deadpanned.

“Look, I don’t care if you trust me as long as you stop giving me shit every time I happen to be in your line of sight. It’s annoying. Human lives are so brief. You don’t have time to hold grudges.” Bill strolled over to the coffee machine and, grabbing an unattended mug, poured himself a cup. “It’s pretty pointless for you to hate me now; you already killed me once. Doesn’t that make us relatively square?”

Ford looked at me, his gaze so heavy it was nearly a palpable weight. Then he looked at Stan for an equally long, equally tense moment, something passing between their eyes. Finally, with a sigh, Ford slid his hand off his gun holster. “Alright. A truce. But, Bill, I swear any omnipotent being that’s out there, if you hurt Dipper—”

“Oh, don’t worry Sixer, STDs aren’t transmittable between interdimensional species. I wouldn’t be worried about the kid. If you ask me, he’s planting his stake on the right side. Now that I’m back, who knows what’ll show up to screw around in your little town of weirdness? After all, I have on good faith that somebody in particular is on his way right now.”

Ford narrowed his eyes. “If that’s the case, what kind of security do we have that you won’t just join whoever’s making trouble now?”

“Maybe the fact that, for the moment, I prefer your grand-nephew’s dick to the pleasure of causing chaos,” Bill said casually, taking a long sip of coffee.

The look on Ford’s face—a mix of rage and absolute repulsion—was almost worth the overall discomfort of this conversation.

Bill got up to take his mug to the sink. “Calm down, Fordsy. It’s just a joke. Honestly, though, I have to admit that I’m just selfish. This town is mine. It’s not like I can leave and claim somewhere else, so I’m not going to let any other big baddie intrude on my territory.”

“And if there really is some new interdimensional being about to roll in, would you know anything about it?”

“Yes, I would, and I’ll even tell you as a gesture of good intention. He’s another demon, from another realm than I was from, and he’s coming to take Gravity Falls with more magical firepower than I ever had.”

Silence fell in the wake of Bill’s aggravatingly chipper voice. Finally, Stan spoke up for the first time in minutes. “Give us one good reason to believe you.”

Bill sighed. “I think I’ve run out of patience with you idiots. If you don’t want to believe me, have fun dying! See you chucklefucks later.” He disappeared, way faster than he had this morning, once again leaving me essentially alone. My family and I exchanged glances, the room filling up with unsaid words that would have to come out eventually. And then we sat down to finish the most awkward breakfast of my life.

Whether Bill was lying to us or not, I had a bad feeling that the rest of this summer was going to live up to its already chaotic beginning.


	3. Chapter 3

The tension in the Mystery Shack household was still running hot since the family’s discovery of Bill a few days ago. Mabel was by far the fastest to roll with the new situation. She was even kind of glad that I’d followed my impulses, despite the fact that she continued to distrust Bill and to be (understandably) a little pissed off at me. But her reaction was miles better than that of the Grunkles, who I could hear periodically yelling at each other downstairs, sometimes even in the middle of the night. Ford wanted to investigate Bill’s claims of a new threat, while Stan wanted none to do with Bill or anything he had to say. And both of them radiated anger in my direction, making the house a virtual warzone. 

It was safer and easier to leave them alone to hash it out, and so I tended to avoid the house as much as possible. 

Of course, I felt bad that I wasn’t with my family, dealing with this the way the Pines always solved potentially apocalyptic issues: together. But what was I supposed to do? I’d virtually betrayed them, and though guilt weighed heavily on me, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. Despite numerous red flags as to his character, I discovered that, on some level, I was actually beginning to like Bill’s company. 

I spent my days scouring the town for clues and flipping through my journals, looking for a chart or a notation that might lead me closer to what exactly was going on. It was frustrating and fruitless work, even with Bill helping. Bill had no way to identify the demon—he’d simply tracked the spikes of magic just as I had unwittingly done in my journal, but unlike me he’d been able to connect the traces to a type of being and recognize how much power had gone into these peaks, which were attempts to create a portal. It was interesting but hardly enough to work with. And since the Grunkles were at a standstill, I would be on my own if not for Bill’s help in the search. We didn’t find much, but I was glad he tagged along. Strangely, he seemed to be the only one who could put me at ease in this chaos, instead of the other way around. 

Usually now Bill and I ended our days deep in the woods, near where I’d first found him as a human. It was deep enough in the forest that we could count on not being disturbed—except once by a poor, lost, now-traumatized lone cub scout. And secluded enough that any noise we made wouldn’t make it out to where anyone could hear it, especially since usually we were fucking. 

When we were both finished, we’d lie naked together, curled up on the carpet of ancient leaves and strange undergrowth. I’d watch the twilight kiss his pale skin with gold. It was the closest I’d ever come towards feeling any kind of tenderness for him. 

As the sun slipped away under the press of nightfall, I pointed through the canopy of leaves above us, toward the constellations peering down from the sky. They were silvery pinpricks, barely making a dent in the moonless darkness, but I wasn’t afraid of the silent, blackened woods. Between my own expertise wandering through them, and the odd sense of safety that seemed to envelope me around Bill, I had nothing to be worried about. Besides, he could see better in the dark than I could. 

I directed his gaze to the strip of three stars in a row. “That’s Orion’s Belt. It’s the easiest one to find, I think. I could pick it out long before I ever saw the real Big Dipper,” I laughed. 

He grinned; his teeth shone white in the dark. “I wish we’d had those where I used to live. Earth is the first realm where I’ve seen stars. Whenever we saw lights in the sky we’d assume it was an invasion.” 

“Did that happen a lot?” 

“Not really. Almost everyone in the cosmos knew not to fuck with—” Bill’s body jolted abruptly, and he sat up. For a second I’d thought I’d just pressed too hard against his balls again, so I started to apologize, but he slapped a hand over my mouth. In the ensuing silence, a crunchy mechanical noise sounded out of the night. I froze. Bill seemed to have stopped breathing. 

I realized the chirp of bugs—the usual background noise of the woods—had stopped completely. Even the breeze had ceased, leaving the humid air to thicken around us. The noise came again, a mix of static and metallic grinding. 

“Who are you? Come out.” Bill called, his eyes glowing brighter, his voice guarded and low. He released me to reach for his clothes and yank them quickly over his limbs. 

I threw mine on as well, and started to stand up next to Bill, but with one hand he pressed my chest back to the ground. I was hidden behind a fallen tree trunk, though that hardly seemed necessary in this pervasive black. 

Then Bill swept his hand in front of him, and his trademark turquoise fire bloomed in a circle around us, illuminating the skeletal trees in sharp relief. Just out of reach of the fire, a darkness seemed to sit across from us. The blackness there seemed to be somehow thicker than the typical night air, and opaque; it blocked out parts of the trees that lay just behind it. The thing loomed, huge and oppressive, over us. The grinding began again, from somewhere near its middle. I tried not to think of teeth, sharpening their points against each other. 

Bill considered the creature (if you could call it that) for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice surprised me; it was his usual perky, sly tone. “Yes, it’s me.” 

He could understand it? And it knew who he was? What the fuck? 

The blackness rumbled again—a response, in some bizarre language. I was beginning to make out what could be inflections, slight swifts in the cadence of the noise. The fact that it was intelligent didn’t really make it any less terrifying, though. 

The thing “talked” for what felt like a long minute, and then Bill laughed—actually laughed, casually and without malice. “Yeah. I have to say, your timing is fantastic.” 

He stepped over me toward it. All the tension had gone out of him; he wasn’t afraid, but somehow that made me even more alarmed. The circle of blue fire went out, allowing darkness to envelope me again as Bill walked away to join the creature. 

I sat up. There was no way I was letting him follow this monster into the woods without me. “Bill, wait—”

He threw his hand out behind him, pointing it at me, and a tiny tongue of blue fire shot out like a bullet. It plunged directly into my forehead, sending a sleepy numbness through my body. In the rapidly growing haze, I peered through my lowering eyelids at the Bill’s departing figure. I only just heard the quiet snap of his fingers, and suddenly I was in my room, sprawled on my bed instead of the forest floor. 

I turned my head and made out Mabel’s snoring form on the other bed. If I could only wake myself up and head back out, I could find them… but sleep pressed on me like a physical weight, and I slipped off into a supernatural coma. 

The sleep Bill had forced onto me was so sound and so deep, when I woke up the sun was nearly at its peak, filling with the attic room with bright, dust-filled light. I shot up and out of bed, still fully dressed from the night before. I had to find Bill. I was pissed and a little worried. Whether he was familiar with that creature or not, it was still dangerous enough that he’d taken such lengths to keep me out of its sight. 

I raced down the stairs, not wanting to admit even to myself how well-rested that sleep had left me. I ran into the kitchen. Mabel looked up from her seat at the breakfast table, where she was picking all the marshmallows out of the box of Lucky Charms. She stuffed a handful in her mouth and spoke through the sugary lumps. “Hey, Dip. Why’s your shirt inside out? And where are you going?” 

I braked suddenly, looking down to see that she was correct. After I fixed my shirt, I ran a hand through my hair, catching leaves and twigs between my fingers. I shook them out onto the floor. “Back to the woods.” 

She swallowed and turned all her attention to me. “Dip-dip, you’re always there. Or with Bill. Or in the woods with Bill. I haven’t really hung out with you since we got here—not since Christmas break, really. I miss my twin brother.” 

A fresh wave of guilt rolled over me. “I’m sorry, Mabel. I didn’t mean to abandon you.” 

She smiled her huge, almost-too-brilliant smile. “Glad to hear it. I would’ve really hated it if you were trying to avoid me on purpose. Want to have breakfast with me?” 

I dug my teeth into my lower lip. Anger at Bill—and concern—still twisted in my stomach, knotting my insides. “I’m not really hungry. I’ll meet you back here later, though, if you want? Tonight, after dinner? We can get the Grunkles and see if we can convince them to do a family game night.” She always loved those, and it was the best idea I could come up with by way of a peace offering to the whole family. 

She acquiesced excitedly, and, satisfied that I’d made her happy, at least for now, I headed for the woods.

Hours later, I still sat, waiting, on a log by the statue, kicking rocks aside that let out tiny enraged screeches as they rolled away. As always, the calm of the woods settled over me, weighing as heavily as the heat in the air. By now it was after three o’clock, and my fury at Bill was beginning to cool. After all, I was sure he had only been trying to protect me. More than likely it was for his own sake, so that he didn’t lose his newest toy to another predatory being, but from a certain viewpoint, it might even have been a sweet gesture. At least, that’s what I tried to convince myself. Maybe he did care, a little. 

I pulled out my latest journal from the leather bag I’d started carrying around everywhere a few years back. I spent the next hour writing up a page for the strange, tusked butterflies flitting around me. I got so absorbed in my work, studying the wings patterned with blue eyes and the fine, needle-like tusks growing up toward the butterflies’ antennae, that I didn’t hear Bill coming until he spoke. 

“How’d you sleep?” 

My head snapped up toward him; he was grinning widely. I fought the urge to smack him, my anger rekindling. “Fine. Notwithstanding the fact that you teleported me home and knocked me out so I couldn’t follow you on your way to meet with… whatever the fuck that thing was. Honestly, Bill, why did you do that?” 

He didn’t look the least bit remorseful. “I didn’t want Wrent to know that you were there.” 

“You could’ve given me some warning! Or at least a clue as to what you were doing!” 

“She took me by surprise. I had no idea she was coming. I wasn’t sure what she’d do if she saw you.” He sat down on the ground in front of me, crossing his lanky legs. “Wrent’s been known to eat humans in the past, if she’s desperate enough. And frankly I’m a little selfish, so I couldn’t risk that.” 

I considered his words for a moment, my curiosity getting the best of me. “What is she?” 

He scratched his head. “Who knows. I never thought it was polite to ask. I’ve never seen another being like her; maybe she’s the only one. Either way, I guess I consider her a friend, from the life before this one. It’s a wonder she recognized me, honestly.”

“I thought the portal to the Nightmare Realm was closed.” 

“Oh, it is. She’s from this world. I might’ve tried to find her myself, but for one thing, she lives in seclusion, so she’s very hard to track down. Usually she only comes out of her hidey hole once a year, to eat. Also, I wasn’t sure she’d take our side in the fight that’s definitely coming soon. Like me, she tends to either stay out of the action or just pick whichever side suits her the best. Anyway, it was nice to come across a familiar face.” 

“How’d you manage to forget about her? The fact that you have an accessible ally here would’ve been nice to know earlier.” 

“Quit being so irritable, Pine Tree. It’s not that cute.” He grinned as I glared at him. “But to be honest, there’s not a lot of space in this human brain. How you people have evolved this way, I don’t know. I forget so much now.” 

“Can we get back to the more important fact that you really acted like a dick last night?” 

He raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re overexaggerating. And shouldn’t you be more worried about this new threat to your town?” He looked at my face, studying it, and after a minute said in a slightly more genuine tone, “I’m sorry for not giving you warning, alright?” 

I studied his face, trying to detect some real regret in his eyes. It was hard to tell, but either way he was right. “Alright. So what did you find out from her? Anything that might help us?” 

“Not much. Like I said, she doesn’t get out much, so her social life’s pretty limited. But she knows who’s coming. The good news is that I know him. He’s called Zephyr, from a realm not too far away from my original one. The bad news is that we were never really on good terms. We weren’t enemies, just acquaintances who tended to avoid each other, so sadly I can’t be sure that I can convince him to turn back.” 

I brightened. Finally, a breakthrough in our search! “Do you know anything else? When’s he coming through? What is he going to do?”

Bill motioned me to slow down. “I didn’t learn that much. I still don’t have any idea when, though I can guess it’ll be this summer. He’s… persistent, and if he wants this realm, he’s going to get it. I have an idea of how it’ll all go down, and it’s not going to be good.” 

“We’ll have to find a way to convince my family to help us. If they get on board, then so will Fiddleford and everyone else who’s in town.” I was getting almost excited, despite the potential for a grim future. All together we’d taken out Bill before, and we could do the same with whoever this was. “We can talk to them tomorrow about it.” I pulled myself back up onto the log I’d sat on earlier and stretched out my legs. 

“Sure.” Bill moved to sit down facing me, wrapping his legs around my waist and leaning in close. My dick was getting hard fast, and I almost spoke up before he did. “Now that we got that out of the way, have you forgiven me enough for a quick fuck, little Pine Tree?” 

I kissed him roughly, grinning against his mouth. “You know ‘little’ isn’t right. Or did you forget about that, too?” 

“Maybe you should remind me.” 

I was unzipping my pants and he was getting on his knees and, the next thing I knew, it was nighttime. 

I’d completely abandoned all sense of time, especially when Bill brought up a few new suggestions. I’d come four times today, and Bill had done the same. It was a record. Fuck, make-up sex was good. 

We’d both decided, tacitly, to be done for the night, and we fell back onto the grass, sweating, naked, sore. Satisfied, though. I lay against Bill’s shoulder and closed my eyes, letting my thoughts trickle back through the day. 

Suddenly a thought struck me, and, in horror, a cold sweat broke out over my skin. “Oh, no. Bill. I forgot about game night.” 

“What are you talking abou—”

I sorted through our pile of clothes and pulled mine on, careful to make sure everything was the right side out this time. “I promised Mabel. She was just saying how she wants to see me more and how it feels like I’m avoiding her, and now I’m super late—fuck, Bill, I can’t believe I forgot about this. I need to go.” I kissed him one last time and ran home. 

Stan was in his crusty armchair in the darkened living room. The TV was on, electronic light flickering over the room in a spectrum of garish colors as brash voices argued onscreen. He was asleep, and Ford was nowhere to be seen. Had Mabel forgotten, too? 

Vaguely hopeful that this was the case, I casually climbed the stairs to the attic. I found her in our room. Her back as to me as she sat, hunched over her desk. I stepped on a creaky floorboard, and the gritty sound of scissors slicing through thick paper stopped. 

Mabel didn’t turn to look at me, and her voice emerged sharp and angry. “We waited for you. Over an hour. Then Stan started to get bored. Ford would’ve waited longer, but I knew by then you weren’t coming.” 

I could see that she had been making tiny snowflakes out of red construction paper. When she stood up and whirled to face me, the snowflakes rode the wind of her movement. They fluttered gently to the floor, looking like strangely shaped bloodstains. 

I tested my words carefully. “Mabel, I’m really sorry. I forgot. But don’t you think there’s more important things going on, like the fact that there’s a new evil demon on his way—”

“And what are you planning to do, have sex with him, too?” Mabel spat out furiously, then immediately turned sheepish. “Okay, that was harsh, and I know whatever’s going on is a big deal, but if you have enough time for your new boyfriend, then you have enough time for the rest of us, too.” 

I hesitated, wanting to appease her but unsure whether I really did have the time to spare. “I’ll try,” I replied, ambivalent. 

“Promise?” She held my eyes with her own. 

“Promise.” What else was I supposed to say? I resolved to do my best, and as I climbed into bed, a tight ache settled in my chest.


	4. Chapter 3.5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a short little chapter on the twins' friendship; it isn't really plot-relevant, but I thought that solving the tension between Dipper and Mabel was important and deserving of a private moment between the two of them.

When I woke up, Mabel’s bed was empty. I gazed lazily around the room, remembering with a shameful ache the conversation I’d had with her last night. I didn’t look forward to awkwardly tiptoeing around her this morning in the wake of that not-quite-resolved argument. 

Then I remembered Bill—more specifically, the afternoon we’d shared yesterday. It was a far more appealing thought, and if Mabel was already off doing something else, what was the harm in seeing Bill for a little while? After all, I had to arrange a time for us to meet with the Grunkles about the Zephyr situation. The sooner we talked it out, the better. 

Sitting up, I ran a hand through my hair and grabbed my hat. Ready to go. I dashed out of the room toward the stairs. 

“You’re going to see him again already?” 

I winced at the hurt in Mabel’s voice and spun around to face her as she stood in the hallway bathroom’s doorway. “I mean, yes, but I thought you were gone, and I—”

“Dipper, I feel like you weren’t that serious last night. ‘I’ll try’? Really? That’s it?” 

I shifted uneasily. “Mabel, we talked about this—”

“We did, but we’re definitely not finished. I was tired last night, so I was going to let it go, but when I woke up this morning I realized that you didn’t seem too excited about the prospect of making more time for me. I thought you were just too caught up in Bill, but then it occurred to me that maybe that’s not it.” Her voice was slowing, softening. She leaned against the wall, one of her fingers picking at the ancient, endearingly ugly wallpaper that covered the hall. “Maybe I’m the problem.” 

I pulled her back into our room and shut the door, alarmed at the defeat that had taken over her voice. “What are you talking about?” 

She slumped onto her bed, and I sat down next to her. Bitterness and sadness intertwined within her voice. “I mean, maybe I’m expecting too much from you. I like to think that nothing’s changed between us, that we’re still best friends, but let’s face it—we go to different colleges. Our lives are pretty different now. But I thought—I thought we still had our summers here together. This was our thing—just us and our family and friends here. But it’s like you don’t even care about that anymore. I can accept that, if that’s what you want.” Her voice cracked on her last word, and she sniffed hard before continuing. “You don’t have to pretend for me that everything’s the same as it always was. Just talk to me. I can take it.” 

Her face, dripping with tears, crushed me. I pulled her into a hug. “I’m so sorry, Mabel. I never meant… I wanted to spend this summer with you. And then Bill happened, and whatever weird new threat’s going on. I got distracted. You’re right. I did pull away from you and from everyone else, but I never meant to do that. I love these summers with you. Everything just got a little out of hand. I’m sorry.” 

“So you really will spend more time with me?” She pulled back enough to meet my eyes, hers glassy with tears but hopeful. 

I wanted to say yes, but I hesitated. “I mean, I have a feeling it’s about to get even more chaotic. This new demon is no joke. I can’t guarantee that I’ll have much free time at all.” I bit my lip. “But I know, once we’ve beat this guy’s ass, just like last time, I’ll spend as much time with you as you want.” 

Her feet in their lime-green socks skimmed the floor, tracing tracks in the dust there. Finally, she looked back up at me, a smile breaking through her tears. “Okay. Thanks, Dipper.” 

“No problem.” I could tell I’d made her far happier now than with my grudging concession of last night, but I knew I couldn’t abandon her to run off with Bill just yet. “Do you… want to play Battleship with me? Or we can make waffles and listen to the news. You know, just to laugh at all the stupid things that go on in this goddamn crazy town.” 

Mabel grinned even more widely, grabbing my wrist and pulling me toward the stairs. “Let’s do all of it.” 

Laughing, we ran together into the kitchen, and—if only for that morning—nothing had changed since the summer of 2012, nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this like two years ago so I'm sorry for the writing not being fantastic. It's almost finished; just the last two chapters need some work, but anyway I'll try to post a chapter a week going forward. If you want more explicit scenes, let me know, I can try to add some in. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it so far!


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